The subscription model is one that all of us are beginning to see more in both our personal and professional lives. Most of us use an on-demand service of some kind, one that we pay a monthly subscription for. It isn’t hard to see the attraction of subscriptions for businesses – they can keep receiving money from their customers on a regular basis instead of a single lump payment.
Adding subscriptions to your WordPress website has never been easier. As with all things WordPress, there are some excellent plugins out there that you can use to add the new features you need. In fact, there are so many plugins available that it helps to know what to look for going in.
Membership Levels
By introducing different tiers of membership to your site, you can restrict access to content according to the membership level. For example, lots of news websites today will allow every visitor to view a handful of articles for free each month, after which they need a subscription to keep reading. However, you can have multiple types of membership and as many different areas of premium content as you wish.
This is a standard feature that is found in all the best subscription billing plugins for WordPress and enables you to go beyond just having free and paid tiers of membership.
Content Control
If you are going to implement different types of membership, you are also going to need to figure out how you are going to gate off content according to membership type. Look for a plugin that gives you as much control as possible over how you can restrict access to different media and website elements.
There are a number of more lightweight plugins that enable you to more finely control access restrictions on your website. However, these lack the billing features that you need for managing subscriptions.
Account Management
Not all plugins are created equal. Some are much more intuitive than others, both for you and your customers. Your subscription billing plugin should let customers manage their subscriptions through your website and will also provide you with the tools that you need to properly configure your different subscription options.
If either you or the customer is going to have a difficult time working with a plugin’s control panel, you will probably be better served by finding something with a less steep learning curve.
Integration With Payment Processors
The vast majority of the subscription billing plugins for WordPress will support PayPal, and most of them will support Stripe as well. Beyond that, the mix of supported processors can be a little unpredictable. The Rebilly WordPress Plugin stands out in this regard with support for more than 90 payment processors.
If you want to be able to sell subscriptions to users around the world, you are going to need to present them with viable payment methods. It stands to reason that if you are able to offer more payment options, more people will be able to pay you.
Finding the right plugin won’t just make adding subscription features to your website easier. It will also enable you and your customers to manage subscriptions through your website. Make sure you take the time to research and consider your options.…
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